


Mnemophobia

by swordznsorcery



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 20:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7188470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordznsorcery/pseuds/swordznsorcery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for an Avengers meme: Prompt: In a lab accident or something, Tony gets chemicals splashed into his eyes and Steve has to hold his head under the tap to try to rinse them out. His eyes are fine but being held under water like that sends Tony straight into a flashback of Afghanistan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mnemophobia

Mnemophobia

 

He wasn't even sure what it was that he had done to cause the explosion. He had been playing with fire, of course - literally, as usual. That was a part of his job, but he knew what he was doing. The oxy-acetylene torch was almost a part of him. He had been using it for as long as he could remember; certainly long enough that it had made his mother screech at him that first time, in a flailing, parental outpouring of desperation - so that, for all his attempts to explain exactly why it was necessary for him to be performing those particular modifications to the air-conditioning unit, he had wound up banished to his room. He had perfected his technique since then. He had grown so used to wielding a torch that he barely needed to think about it; the machine itself seeming to meet him halfway. He could see the designs that twisted and turned inside his brain, written in the air in the rain of golden sparks. The fire flashed new ideas at him, equations and theorems that he watched as he worked. Plans for another day, alongside the designs for now. The torch was almost as much a friend as the robots. He trusted it, as he trusted his own hands. 

A rogue chemical, perhaps. He was theorising about it, vaguely, as the flash of fire ignited across the bench; as a weird, alien smell caught in the back of his throat. Something that somebody else might have spilled? Something that wasn't where it was supposed to be? Something that had caught the very edges of one of those great, sparking arcs that illuminated his work. He had time to wonder about it, as he was knocked backwards off his feet; as he was thrown clean across the lab. His brain threw up several possible chemical culprits, at the same time that it warned him of the upcoming impact against the wall. A second later, as wall and shoulders collided; as up and down did their best to confuse each other and his brain; another thought came to him. If there had been some unexpected chemical, lying in wait to catch him unawares, what had happened to it? Had it been incinerated; had it spread, insidious and silent, as vapour to flood the room? He got his answer after another second, when the floor rushed up to meet him, when a chair collided with his leg, when his brain got the chance to catch up with itself. Something hurt. Something that hadn't been bruised. Something that hadn't hit a wall, or a bench, or had a chair jump on top of it. His eyes. It hit him with the pain of a thousand burning suns, flaming within each eye socket, as though the very essence of his being was trying to burn its way out from the inside of his skull. His hands flew up from his sides, careless of whatever might be splattered upon them, filled with a tearing need to grip, to touch, to rub, or wipe, or _something_. They never made contact. Something was there. Something was stopping him. Hands gripping his arms, holding them down at his sides. Hands, holding on so tight, with a strength against which he was helpless. Foreign, unknown hands, trapping him and holding him against his will. 

He fought. In a whirlwind of pain and panic, he fought. He needed to touch his eyes. He needed to ease the pain. He needed to do something. The pain was getting worse, the tears that prickled in his eyes reacting against something. He wanted to theorise as to what, but his mind was not clear enough, and all that he could think about was escape. There was a voice somewhere above him, but he couldn't hear it for the blood hammering away in his ears. Couldn't think of anything but freedom; couldn't begin to reach it for the hands that gripped his own. 

He was hauled upright, with a sudden, dizzying force that made his head spin, and turned his world upside down. No matter how he struggled, he was borne across the floor, up and down confusing themselves again, dizziness almost hiding the pain as his abused head lost its balance and its bearings. The voice was still talking to him, but there was another sound now, joining the rushing of the blood, and burying the voice still further. The roar of a waterfall - except surely that made no sense. There were no waterfalls here, were there? Or... where was here? He fought again, fought more than before, disorientation adding to his need to break free. If he could only stand up, take a breath, work out what was what, then surely everything would make sense again? But the hands were too strong, and he couldn't hear the voice, and the waterfall was closer, and the _pain_. God, the pain. It was burning him from the inside out. It was turning his brain to jelly. It was bad enough to push him towards the edge of unconsciousness. Perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, he should welcome that prickling of black that was encroaching upon his mind. 

And then his feet were gone from beneath him, and he was jerked, roughly and suddenly, into a horizontal position. His grip on consciousness, already precarious, wavered and failed; nausea flooded what was left of his waking mind. Cold droplets splashed across his skin; and then, just as his mind lost contact with everything else, he realised what the waterfall really was. He suddenly realised what was going on. 

He was lying on a table, hard and wooden. Water was pouring down onto his face, as an unbreakable grip trapped his wrists and held him immobile. He couldn't fight back, he couldn't escape the water, he couldn't draw breath for fear that he would drown. Pain and confusion, fear and desperation - they were all the same. He was fighting, fighting against things that he couldn't see, people who lurked on the peripheries of his understanding, talking in murmurs of conversation that he could neither understand nor properly hear. They wanted something, although for the time being he couldn't remember what. He only knew that they wanted to hurt him; had hurt him. The pain was testament to that, burning inside of him, turning his skin to fire. Pain that made his very bones ache, made his skull feel ready to explode. None of it was enough to distract him from the water. An endless, gushing nightmare, filling his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. With every last reserve of strength that he could summon, he fought back against whatever was holding him down. He knew from before that it would not be enough. It was never enough. That was immaterial. Nothing mattered but escape; nothing mattered but breathing; nothing mattered but finding the surface. For as long as he was alive, he would fight. It was not about heroism or strength; it was simply impossible for anyone living to do anything less. 

The water disappeared, as it always did in the end. They didn't want him dead; not yet. A part of his mind knew that, even though it was impossible to remember it when the water was pouring down. Eventually they always hauled him out of it, untied his wrists, shoved the car battery back into numb and frozen arms. They would throw a hood over his head again, haul him back to the cave where Yinsen was waiting, with the sense and good grace not to offer empty sympathies. Tony would sink to the floor, or sometimes onto his cot, if his legs could hold him up that long. There would be silence, as the roaring in his ears ebbed away, and his sense of self returned to him. Silence, until he was ready to make some stupid, facile comment to Yinsen, as a signal that he was ready to rejoin the world, however briefly. It always went the same way. Only this time was it different. 

He was hauled out from under the water, the hands releasing him at last. Nobody cut his wrists free; for once his hands had not been bound. There was no bite of harsh, home-made rope; no heated friction from strips of unseasoned horse leather. There was no car battery, shoved against his chest with a yell in one of half a dozen languages that he didn't understand. There was just the wood under his back, and lights above his head, and gradually - so painfully, painfully slowly - a return to reality. He could see the ceiling above him, every square inch of it designed by himself. There was no rock, no darkness looming on the edges of his vision, no uncountable jostle of people, eager to emphasise their power over him. There was only silence; and, a moment later, a glimpse of blond hair fluttering above. 

"Boy." Steve's voice, typically good-natured, his characteristic smile clearly audible. "You don't make it easy to help you, Tony." 

"What happened?" He thought he remembered, but his memory was too much of a mess to be sure. Things that he knew had happened were too intercut with things that had happened somewhere else. Somewhen else, in a place of darkness and shadow. Steve loomed closer then, hands holding Tony's arms again, darting back when Tony, helpless to prevent himself, flinched away. 

"There was an explosion." Steve sounded a little further away now, his voice perhaps that little more guarded. Very, very slowly, Tony sat up. His head spun, but this time there was nothing like so much disorientation. This time he remained in the lab. 

"Yeah. Some kind of chemical. Didn't like the fire, I guess." His voice sounded hoarse, a sharp, grating feeling at the back of his throat, like he had breathed in something that his body did not like. His eyes stung as well, although only a faint remembrance of the ghastly pain of before. The water had washed it all away, then. The pain in his eyes, and probably something in his throat as well. He quite possibly owed his life to Steve; he almost certainly owed him his sight. He knew that he ought to say thank you, but the words weighed him down, threatening to choke him just as the water had done. He couldn't say thank you for that. He couldn't be grateful for what he had just experienced, no matter the good intent. All those months of self-administered therapy, all those nights fighting back against the dreams. It felt like it had all been for nothing. Yesterday was still hiding in the back of his mind, ready to leap out at him whenever it got its chance. 

"Are you okay?" There was real concern in Steve's voice. Tony knew that it was genuine. It was Steve - or course it was genuine. Tony wasn't always very good at dealing with Steve. Double-edged words and hidden agendas were far more familiar territory. Right now he had even less idea how to face the man. He managed a smile; the same one that he had dragged up a thousand times before, especially in those first few shaky months, after he had come home. Months when he had been dealing with Afghanistan, and Obadiah, and _no, don't think about that_. Pepper always saw through that smile, and so did Jarvis. Nobody else. He was even pretty good at believing it himself. 

"Fine. Thanks." It felt ungrateful to wish that Steve would just go, but he couldn't help but long for solitude. He needed it to catch his breath, and pull the barriers back up around himself. Steve was going nowhere, however. He was still hovering, still smiling uncertaintly, still clearly wanting to help. He didn't even know what was going on, but he still wanted to do something about it. The thought almost made Tony laugh, if bitterly. Confounded superheroes. Always wanting to do the right thing. Always wanting to right wrongs and make the world a better place. He was going to have to start keeping less savoury company. It seemed somehow safer all round. 

"Tony..." 

"I'm fine, okay?" He couldn't help snapping, couldn't help standing up suddenly, and moving away from Steve. It wasn't that he expected the other man to grab him again, and push him back underneath the water. It was just that his body was primed to react a certain way, and he was still seeing memories overlaid across the present. His arms crossed themselves over his chest, and he was sure, for a moment, that he could feel the weight of the car battery within them. He let them fall back to his sides, and tried not to remember too much. Tried not to remember how helpless he had been against Steve's greater strength. How hard it had been to breathe. 

"You're not okay. You're clearly not. I was trying to save you, Tony. I was trying to help, and you reacted like you thought I was trying to drown you!" There was a trace of humour in Steve's voice, the situation clearly absurd to him. He couldn't know, of course. All the Avengers knew about Afghanistan, up to a point. They only knew what Tony had said, though. He had told Rhodey about the torture, sort of. Bits of it anyway, during dark evenings sharing a bottle of whisky. He had told Obadiah some of it, during those first few days back together again, when he had still believed that Obadiah was the foundation of his whole damned world. Fury probably guessed at some of it. He wasn't fool enough to believe that a man like Tony Stark could be coerced into doing anything - not when he had had trouble enough himself in trying to bring Ironman to heel. What Fury knew, Fury kept to himself. He was that sort of man. 

"I..." He owed Steve something. The man had saved him, or saved his sight, or probably had, or... Tony couldn't help but take a step back, as Steve took a step towards him. Damn it, this was stupid. He raised his head, away from echoes of a rocky floor strewn with puddles, and looked Steve straight in the eye. Honest, well-meaning eyes. No hate, no contempt, no telltale glitter of a man getting off on the power that he had over another. Just Steve, with a question behind a smile. Tony smiled back, and threw off all the memories. Held Steve's gaze, and let his voice fill itself with calm, and a cheer that was wholly false. 

"You just dredged up a few memories, that's all. Of Afghanistan." It was nothing. He could make it sound like nothing. "Did they have water-boarding in your time, Rogers? It's a..." _A madness, an agony, an endless descent into hell_. "A way of softening people up. Like an interrogation technique, I guess." 

"You mean torture." Steve's eyes went to the sink. He was smart. It wouldn't be hard for him to put the pieces together. Even if he hadn't ever heard of water-boarding - and he was Captain America, for goodness sakes; it wasn't as though he was ever going to have been a part of anything like that - he could figure it out easily enough. Figure it out from the thought of how he had held Tony down, stretched out on the bench, with his face under the tap. Tony could see the moment that it all connected, and saw a flash of understanding that made him want to flinch away again. He didn't want sympathy. That wasn't what he saw next in Steve's eyes, however. Instead he saw horror and disbelief. 

"Tony... Tony, I... I'm so sorry. I didn't... You must have thought..." Steve was shaking his head, and moving closer again. This time Tony let him come. It seemed unfair to back away this time. "I thought you were being contrary. Hell, I was angry with you. I was holding you tighter than I had to, because I thought you were being a--" He broke off, leaving Tony to finish the sentence for him, as blithely as he possibly could. 

"A jerk? Yeah, well. I probably was. Hardly without precedent, right? I should have known everything was okay. Everything _is_ okay. I'm grateful for what you did, Cap, so don't worry about it." 

"It's not okay. You were fighting me. I should have realised that there had to be something more to it than thickheadedness." Steve looked faintly green. Under other circumstances it might have been funny - the great Captain America, horrified by his own super powers, and his instinct to do the right thing. It wasn't funny, though. Not even nearly. 

"You didn't know. It's not in any of my files. I don't have a clue how many people know, but I don't imagine you'd need many fingers to count them. That's the way I like it. Usually it's not much of a concern." 

"No. Until some buffoon twice your size goes and holds you underwater against your will. I--" 

"Hey, go easy on the self-reproach there, Captain Ego. Twice my size?" 

"I meant in relative terms. I--" For a moment a long silence hung between them - then, finally, Steve smiled again. "I'm saying sorry a lot, aren't I." 

"Yeah, well this time I'll accept the apology. Trying to drown me is one thing. Insulting me is another." Tony managed a smile, a far more genuine one this time; and was rewarded with a low laugh in reply. Not Steve's usual laugh by any means, but a beginning. 

"I'll remember that." Steve was holding his gaze, clearly looking for something behind Tony's eyes. Whatever it was, he wouldn't see it. If nothing else, Tony could be sure of that. He knew how to keep things hidden. He had learnt that years ago, alongside calculus and quantum mechanics. "I really am sorry, you know." 

"Yeah, I know." Cautiously Tony reached out, and offered the other man an uncertain clap on the shoulder. It felt false and unnatural, but it also felt like the right thing to do. Steve returned the gesture a moment later, his own touch lingering, as though he was trying to convey something through the sheer power of his hand, pressed against black cotton. 

"I... This'll stay between us. I mean... not the accident, obviously. You should get Bruce to check your eyes out. But the other thing. You have my word." 

"Thanks." 

"Although, you know, there's no shame in... in seeking help, you know. If... you know." Steve winced, the difficulties inherent in having a meaningful conversation writ clearly in the lines of his brow. "I mean, in case it ever happens again." 

"Well-meaning colleagues don't stuff my head under taps on a regular basis. I don't think even I'm that annoying." 

"Tony..." 

"I get it, captain. It's good to share. So say the books, and the self-help gurus, and the little plaques that people hang on their walls. In real life it doesn't work like that, though. When did you last open up? When did you last tell somebody about the things that bother you in the dark?" 

"Sometimes I want to. Maybe." Steve's eyes flickered away, the unexpected directness of Tony's words clearly catching him off guard. Tony nodded. 

"Yeah, but you don't. I'll look after my memories, just like you look after yours." 

"Yeah. Sure." For a moment Steve hesitated - then, with a last, awkward pat of his hand against Tony's arm, he turned and strode away. Left behind with the ruin of his latest work, Tony could only turn his eyes towards the sink, and sag against the work bench. Around him were the familiar noises of the robots clearing up the mess, and the whirring of the air-conditioning, as Jarvis made sure that there was nothing left of whatever that damned chemical had been. Tony let the sounds comfort him, filling the silence and grounding him in the present. For one, horrible moment he had truly believed that his escape had been a dream. All of it - the suit, his freedom, those precious moments with Pepper - all a trick played by his mind. Like all those mornings when he had woken up, afraid to open his eyes in case he was back in the cave. He forced himself to focus on the fact that it was over now, giving in to the demands of his legs to be allowed to sit. All of this because of a tap. All of this because of a man who was stronger then he was, the way that so many men were. He drew in a deep breath, cool and dry, and without even a taste of water. He was okay. Everything was okay. Everything was always going to be okay. He was Tony Stark. If the past tried to creep up on him again, he would merely invent something to stop it. That was what he did. All of the memories in the world could not take away his mind from him. 

And if, two nights later, Steve Rogers found a bottle of whisky in his room, and a brief, hand-written note saying: _Want a drink sometime?_ , it had nothing to do with memories. And if, later that same night, two heads bent over two glasses in a quiet room, it had nothing to do with any desire to talk. The past was the past. Neither Tony nor Steve had any reason to be haunted by it.

 

The End


End file.
